The Borgia Nun
by carriebess
Summary: At the end of her life the nun who was once Lucia Borgia recounts the story of her adventures, which took her far from the walls of a convent. A continuation of "The Pitfalls Service" series.
1. Chapter 1

Sister Maria Christina was roused from her evening prayers by the strident knocking of Sister Magdalena on her cell door. The infirmaress who waited impatiently was a thoroughly unpleasant woman who looked upon the sick and elderly with distaste and as her assistant it was often Sister Maria Christina's duty to attend to those who were soon to die. Sister Magdalena peered into the room as though expecting to see some impropriety. Finding none she pressed her lips together and said in her harsh voice, "Sister Maria Lucia has asked for someone to sit with her this night." Sister Maria nodded and followed her through the halls of the Convent of Corpus Domini.

The aged nun lay on her cot, protected from the chill of the evening by a thick wool blanket over the gray tunic and white scapular of her vocation. Her gaze turned from contemplating the cross upon a low table when the two sisters entered the room. Sister Maria Christina placed the candle that had guided their steps next to the flickering taper that bathed the room in a muted glow.

Sister Maria Lucia was, by far, the eldest bride of Christ at the convent. She was called "The Holy Sister" by some of the other nuns and there were tales beginning to spread throughout Ferrara of the miraculous healing brought about by the intercession of a woman so beloved by God that she had been allowed to live far beyond the normal span of years. Other tales abounded, of course, for the sisters loved and craved gossip and tales of the outside world more than bread or wine. Some said that she was the illegitimate daughter of a prince or a king. Another said that the Sister had once spoken to her of living in New Spain for a time, far across the ocean where the blood of martyrs still cried out for justice. Sister Maria Christina had never conversed with her, for she was too humble in the hierarchy of the convent to warrant a private conversation with the venerable lady but she always made sure to be close enough to hear her sing at prayers. Sister Maria Lucia's voice was fragile and soft, but it still maintained a fair measure of a beauty that must have once made her sound like an angel.

Sister Maria Lucia smiled and effortlessly dismissed the infirmaress. "Thank you for bringing her, Sister. I will trouble you no longer this night."

Sister Magdalena left the room with an audible huff. AS soon as the door had closed Sister Maria motioned to the stool placed close to the bed. She looked at the younger woman with a twinkle in her eye. "She offered to sit with me but that woman has the face of a hatchet."

From outside the room they heard a muffled gasp and the sound of rapid footsteps departing. Sister Maria Christina clapped her hand over her mouth to suppress an inappropriate burst of laughter.

Sister Maria Lucia smiled broadly, which caused the wrinkles in her face to spread like cracks in a parched field. "I thought that she might be listening. She is a mean sort of woman. I have often thought that her patients die so rapidly simply to be freed from her tender care."

Sister Maria Christina could no longer contain herself and the two women spent several minutes laughing together.

"Have you recently taken your vows?" Sister Maria Lucia asked her when their laughter had abated. She nodded. Beneath her veil the newly shorn hair still felt peculiar, as though she were a soldier who had lost a limb. "What is the name given to you at birth?"

Sister Maria Christina hesitated. Although it might be a sin she could not yet think of herself by the name she had taken with her vows. In her heart of hearts she was still Marietta, who used to run through the fields near her home with the butcher's son. "Marietta," she whispered.

"Then for this night I will call you Marietta and we shall converse like old friends. I do not wish to be alone this night."

"Would you have me send for a confessor, Sister?" Marietta rose from her stool, ready to rouse the priest who served the convent if the Holy Sister wished it.

"I confessed a few days ago and what few sins have taken residence upon my soul are so inconsequential that it hardly seems necessary to bother Father on a blustery night such as this." The nun was silent for a second and then laughed softly. "When I returned to the church my confession lasted half a day and my confessor fainted. I have only recently finished the novenas he set me as penance."

"You..returned to the church? You can not mean that you put aside your holy vows Sister?" Marietta could not keep the shock from her voice. While it was not unheard of for a sister to engage in affairs of the heart or even to give birth to children while still brides of Christ few put aside the veil.

"It is something of a family tradition." An enigmatic smile played across the deeply wrinkled face. "Would you like to hear my story? Matins has not yet been sung and I need little sleep. If the Angel of Death finds me this night I would prefer to greet him as a friend, with my eyes open wide. But be warned. It is not a gentle story that will comfort a sister who had only begun her life in the church.

Marietta nodded eagerly, unwilling to speak lest the sister rethink her decision.

"Bring me the box." The sister pointed across the cell to a small table which held the crucifix and an ornate wooden box. It was small, made of dark wood, and in places the carving had been worn smooth. When Marietta had placed the box on the bed she reached under her white scapular and removed a heavy golden chain from which hung an ornate key. Her hand shook, and it took several attempts before the sister could fit the key into the lock and open the box.

It smelled of roses. Dried petals crumbling to dust littered the top of the box, shielding the contents from sight. Sister Maria brushed them away gently. "The roses were so beautiful, pink Castilian roses that bloomed for months upon that rocky hill." She murmured, and began lifting each piece from beneath its fragrant covering.

There was no rhythm to the collection, no unifying force that drew them together except in the mind of the old woman whose smiles and laughing eyes suddenly made her appear much younger. Marietta looked closer at the face that was lit with memory, drawing the bones behind the fragile skin and seeing the delicate nose and lovely eyes that were golden in the light of the candle. She was very beautiful once, Marietta thought, with a surge of jealously that she was immediately ashamed of. How could such a thought cross her mind in the presence of a sister whose piety and devotion to the church were revered by all? That she herself had always been plain made no difference now.

There was a sheaf of papers tied with a ribbon, knotted around two ornate pearl rings, one black and one white. A shell. A set of wickedly sharp looking daggers. A feather, long as her arm, and vibrantly green in color. Several of the other pieces were jewelry. A cross caught her eye. It was set with a brilliantly clear stone that shone in the light, as large as a robin's egg.

"Is that a..." Marietta could not finish the sentence. This cross was the treasure of a prince, not a nun who had taken a vow of poverty.

"A diamond? Yes. It was a gift from a king who was once a great man. One of the two men that I loved." She searched through the box and pulled out a golden ring that was set with green stone. "This was from the other, and had he lived I would never have returned to the church." There were tears on the nun's face now as the memory of her life overwhelmed her.

Sister Maria wiped the tears from her cheeks and untied the sheaf of papers. She held the two rings in her hand and touched the pearls that shone with the life of the water that had given them birth. "They belonged to my mother and my father." She unfolded the first piece of parchment and showed Marietta the sketch, drawn in red chalk, which glowed with vitality despite the simplicity of the work. In a few strokes the artist had caught the likeness of an extraordinarily handsome man with long, curling hair and a stern expression. "My father, Cesare Borgia, who was also called Duke Valentino." Sister Maria looked up at Marietta's gasp. "You are familiar with this name, I see."

Marietta nodded. There was scarcely a person alive who had not heard of the infamous Borgia family. Duke Valentino had left the church that his father ruled as pope and blazed a bloody trail across Italy that had almost succeeded in uniting it into one kingdom.

The second piece of parchment was also a sketch done in red chalk. The rendered woman had a sweet, gentle face with full lips and curls that were tumbling down her shoulders. "You?" Marietta asked.

Sister Maria Lucia smiled but shook her head. "No, although we had a strong resemblance. My mother, Lucrezia Borgia." The sister laughed at the expression on Marietta's face. "Scandalized now, I see. Close your mouth, my dear, before an ill humor enters your body." Sister Maria picked up the shell and showed it to the young nun. It was no different from the thousand other shells washed up on sandy beaches throughout Italy, white with a delicate pink center.

"I was born Lucia Borgia and I was raised near the town of Grosetto, close to the sea."


	2. Chapter 2

A Note- Sorry about the delay but I am about one chapter away from completing another project and it has been taking a lot of my time. You can private message me for details because it is very definitely Borgia inspired. And thanks for the kind reviews. You guys are the best

I was raised in Grosseto, which is close to the sea.

Rain never seemed to fall on the sand colored villa that rested on a small hill which sloped down to a rocky shoreline. The small square building would blaze with pink and gold radiance in the morning and when the sun slipped into the west it would turn the groves into labyrinths of shadow. War did not exist, or disease, or sadness, for my mother and cousins worked together to maintain a wall of protection that insulated me from the turbulence that characterized those years. All that I can remember of my childhood is the sweetness of the figs and the grapes that I plucked, still warm, from my father's vineyards, the smell of the bread when it was removed from the ovens and the strength of my mother's arms when she would clasp me to her after a day spent playing in the fields. And as real as all of these things was the presence of God in my heart.

From my earliest days I could sense Him in the pounding of the surf upon the rocks and the wind as it blew through my hair, whispering secrets about the sanctity of creation and the divine force that animates life. God was present for me in all things and I spoke to him and his angels as though they were the closest acquaintances, the dearest confidants of my heart.

Two events are noteworthy from a childhood that was marked by little more then the profound happiness of the innocent. The first occurred as I approached my seventh year of life. In that place we did not mark the passing of the seasons by a calendar or a glass, but by the rhythms of the earth, which had not changed since ancient times. It was a cycle of planting and harvest, plenty and then the mild chill of the winter. Fish from the sea were bountiful and during the bustle of harvest time the children would be sent into town to retrieve fish that were used in the pots of stew that fed the workers. My eldest cousin led us down to the water near town and in my inattention I became separated and wandered like a small bird among the rocks, examining the pockets of water that had been left by the receding tide. A silvery fish flopped in one of the puddles, close to death as the water that is its life sank into the sand slowly like grains through a glass. I caught the fish in the skirt of my shift, becoming hopelessly wet, and carried it in my arms tenderly as a babe to the water and watched it swim away.

"Why did you do that?" A deep voice asked. The man sitting on the rock stood and pulled back the hood of a gray monk's robe, revealing a harsh face bracketed with the lines of skin that has spent much of its time in the sun.

"God did not want the fish to die." I said, too innocent to realize that my words were dangerous.

"He did not wish a fish to die? Then why was it cast up on the shore?" His voice was a deep baritone which thundered and echoed. The water wherein I stood, deeply aquamarine and warm, teamed with life and it swirled and eddied around my toes, which dug into the wet sand beneath them. Under my foot a small white seashell was revealed by the shifting sand and my curls trailed in the water like golden snakes when I stooped to pick it up.

"So that I could rescue it." I said, and the voice of my cousin Vitello sounded in the distance, calling my name frantically. I placed the newly discovered treasure in the man's hand and he watched me leave with a contemplative expression. In the days that followed the strange man's face haunted my thoughts and I begged my cousin to return with me to the beach.

"Back again, oh savior of fishes?" The friar asked without a glance in my direction. I ignored his question and asked one of my own.

"Who are you looking for?" I climbed up next to him on the rock, a pitted boulder whose rough texture tore at my hands. Profound sadness hung about him, as though he had lost something precious.

The man made a noise in the back of his throat, halfway between a growl and a laugh. "God."

I sat close to him on the boulder that was his perch, ignoring the dropping of birds who had liberally splattered his robe, and told him about God, the comforter, who sent his angels to watch over me and who sang such beautiful melodies in my ear. The friar wept, and his tears fell into the pink center of the scallop shell that rested in his hand. A symbol of baptism, he said through his sobs, and faith renewed through the belief of a child. He returned the shell to me, saying that its purpose had been served.

Two figures were walking towards us on the beach. The slim, elegant form of my mother, clad all in black, and my cousin Vitello, who had a bright red patch like a flag on his cheek. I ran to her, and for all that I was filthy she picked me up and hugged me tightly.

"My dearest one." She murmured, stroking her hand through my sand stiffened curls. "Stay with your cousin for a moment while I speak with your new friend." Her gentle words were at odds with the dark fire in her eyes and I was suddenly afraid. Vitello held my hand tightly while my mother walked to where the friar sat, and there was a new fluidity to her stride, a quiet purpose and coiled strength. The friar must have sensed the danger as well, for his words were rushed.

"Dona, your daughter.." And then he stopped, and looked closely at my mother. Surprised recognition clouded his senses."I have seen your face before. " He looked deeply disturbed.

She stilled. "Where, good friar? I have a common enough face."

The friar laughed but there was no humor in it. "Untrue. I thought you beautiful. And deadly."

"Where, good Friar?" She repeated, and her voice was a sibilant whisper.

"Nepi. I watched as you entered the city with the Borgia whore.. And this girl, she looks...so like her. There were rumors..." My mother had something in her hand and she stood very close to the friar. He looked at where I stood and a horrible change came over his face, fear and revulsion and betrayal. "Borgia." He whispered, and it sounded like a curse. My mother moved like a striking snake and then retreated, and the friar pressed a hand to this neck where a crimson stain bloomed like a rose on his gray robe.

"She has been graced by God, Dona." He whispered as he leaned against the boulder for support in the last glimpse that I had of him. "He will claim her."

I did not know what the Friar meant until I reached my womanly flowering at the age of thirteen. My mother and father, for he had returned after many years away, spoke to me the very evening the blood which is the curse of Eve appeared on my thighs. I learned from them the story of my birth, my true name, and the sad and beautiful love story that they had born witness to. They sat together, my father's arm around my mother's shoulders, lending her his strength as she prepared to let me go. I remember it so clearly, as if the events only happened a year before, not close to seventy years, and all those I loved now dead. My mother, Betta, straight backed and slim as a girl with white beginning to streak through her hair like lightening. And my father, the Borgia assassin Micheletto, with his hair turned to ash and his dark blue eyes full of love and the pain which never left him. I was offered then the choice of determining my own fate, and only time has shown me how precious a gift that truly was, hard won and bought with the blood and sacrifice of the woman who had given me life. There was a dowry in wait that would allow me to marry anyone, and documents that named me the daughter of Duke Valentino. Already my father had received inquires from father's interested in an alliance and I knew that this was the dearest hope of my mother's heart, that I should marry and bear her many grandchildren.

My brother Nico, with his mop of red curls, played at my feet as my parent's waited for me to speak. Life stretched out before me like a magnificent tapestry, full of paths that might be trod, adventures that waited to be savored and experienced. But the course of my life had been set, and I embraced it. The sacrifice of my mother sounded in my ears, and the tragedy of my dead father and the crimes of my family, whose sins I could now atone for with a life of service.

"I shall enter a convent."

"Did it shock you to learn that your parents.." Marietta trailed off, unsure of how to continue.

The nun on the bed laughed. "Did it shock me to learn that my parents were Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, infamous incestuous lovers and children of the pope who was called the Antichrist? " Sister Maria Lucia's left eyebrow rose until her forehead was a canvas of lines and hollows. The sarcasm was gentle, but evident.

Marietta laughed. Verily, it was a silly question.

"It was a tragedy that they could only ever love one another. Love is a great gift from God, my young sister, but it seldom appears as we would wish it. As I soon discovered to my peril." Sister Maria Lucia handed the white shell to Marietta, who stroked the delicate ridges before she placed it back in the chest. The elderly nun then removed the two finely made daggers, which rested in leather sheaths whose leather was dry and cracked with age. " I had set my heart on the path of the Lord, but my mother and father insisted that I should also learn the way of the blade."


	3. Chapter 3

"I had set my heart on the path of the Lord, but my mother and father insisted that I should also learn the way of the...blade."

Reclining on her cot Sister Maria Lucia had begun to cough and finished the sentence in a gasp. It was a moist, wracking cough that brought a bubble of foam to her lips. Marietta wiped the spittle away and brought a goblet that she filled with wine to the sister's lips, supporting her head as she drank deeply. Her skin, already so pale, had taken on a gray tinge in the flickering light of the candle and the nails on the hand wrapped around her wrist were blue. She truly is dying, Marietta realized, and she wanted to weep in sadness and gratitude that she had been chosen to sit by the venerable woman's side and hear her last words. Sister Maria Lucia must have divined Marietta's thoughts for she patted the other nun's hand gently and smiled before she continued her narrative.

As a protected bride of Christ I would have no need to learn such skills, I protested when he sent my tutors away. My father responded with the tale of a convent attacked by the retreating French army, its holy sister's raped and murdered. "You will not leave until you can defend yourself. My oath to your father demands it."

That morning he took me to the bowels of the Villa, a dank, airless place that I seldom ventured and showed me a collection of blades that he had laid out on a rough wooden table. Spider-webs brushed at my hair and I cringed, horrified, wishing that I could escape. He bid me to sit at his feet and listen as he explained the unique purpose of each. My hands passed over them, deadly instruments kept in a permanent state of lethal sharpness, and hesitated over one blade in particular. It was carved with a design of roses on the hilt and I smiled to see the incongruently of the elegant design on so large and sharp a blade. "One of your father's." He murmured, picking up the knife and caressing the carving with his fingers. Micheletto de Corella was not a large man, although he seemed to me a giant among mere mortals. Rather he was average size, with corded muscles easily concealed beneath his garments. His hair, once red as fire, now flowed to his chest in disordered white waves, where it mingled with his beard. He did not appear to blend into the darkness that surrounded us in the cellar that was lit only by the brace of candles on the table. Rather is seemed that he was the source of the darkness, and it enveloped him lovingly.

"Your father was fast. But there was too much softness in him for him to have been an accomplished killer. He could never stomach the knife in the dark."

I sought to tease my father, for I had never seen a side to him that was not gentle, the very best of fathers whose rasping voice would sing me to sleep. "As you could?"

He threw the dagger in his hand. A rat had been scuttling around behind the shelves where the cheeses aged, grown fat and complacent in the dark solitude of the cellar. The instant its head emerged my father struck. It died with a tiny scream that sounded almost human, blade buried within the bloated stomach. The level of skill it demonstrated was terrifying.

"I preferred it." I listened more closely to him after that, and only ventured to speak again as he showed me the correct way to sharpen a blade.

"What can you tell me of my mother?" He looked at me from under the shaggy mane of white hair, eyes like midnight colored velvet.

"Which of them?" It was very like him, the gentle reminder that although I had been born of another's body the woman who had tucked me into bed each night and smothered my face with kisses also had a claim on the title. There was a great fervour in me to know all there was to discover about them, the two who had given me life and the two that had formed me.

"I would know your thoughts on both, my father." He laid the dagger across his knee and sharpened it with a stone, the movements long and rhythmic. "Lucrezia Borgia is the saddest person I have ever known. The world took everything from her, and then took still more until there was nothing left to give. She is a shell of the person my master loved, a woman whose smiles were as warm as the summer sun."

"She was his softness?" I asked, referring to his earlier words, for there was little I had learned about the character of Duke Valentino that implied softness. He had been a ruthless leader, a prince of the church who had cast off the scarlet robes in order to gain temporal power.

"Yes." My father breathed, his voice making a soft hiss of the words. "His softness and his heart. I saw it the first time." The movement of his arm stilled as he lost himself in the memories of a previous life.

"And...Mother?"

My father did not often laugh. The peculiar, grating sound sound that emerged from his bent head was tinged with rust." For all her care she is the most ruthless killer I have ever known." His voice was tinged with an unmistakable note of pride. "A gifted student." I thought of the friar at the beach who had slumped against the rock in my last sight of him, red staining his robes. My mother had killed a man of God simply for recognizing my Borgia face.

"What of Duke Valentino?"

My father sighed. "He was a man torn apart by what others wished for him. Cesare Borgia was a born general, fierce and cunning, but his father wished him to be a prince of the church. By the time he had thrown those bonds aside too little time remained to his families supremacy. Had the Borgia Pope lived longer my master would have ruled the world."

"You loved him." It was not a question. This was my father and I could read the love that was on his face the way that I could read a coming tempest as it raced over the waves. He looked at me, searching for horror or condemnation but found neither.

"Yes."

I laid my hand on his bristled cheek and stroked the deep lines."How fortunate I am to have been born into a family bound by so much love." 

"Your father was a sodomite?" Marietta shrieked. It sounded shockingly loud in the small cell, the word echoing like a denunciation from the lips of God.

Sister Lucia's manner grew suddenly colder then the breezes that came down from the mountains. "My father..." She emphasized the word, "was the very best of men, who, like St. Joseph, loved a child not his own and I will hear no word against him."

Marietta, instantly contrite, hastened to explain. "Your pardon, Sister, it is just that the sin of Sodom is so reviled by the godly."

Sister Maria Lucia did not relent. "Have you never engaged in the hymn of the convent, as I have done on a multitude of occasions? Pray explain to me the difference."

Marietta blushed deeply at the sister's frank words, crimson rising like a tide to stain her face. Physical relationships between the inhabitants of the nunnery were not openly discussed although their existence was known to all. There was a postulant that she was especially close to, whom she visited on the nights when the demands of her flesh became overwhelming. She had never equated the heinous sin of Sodom and Gomorroh with the shy kisses and fumbling caresses that relieved the ache of her earthly body.

"I know not, sister, but I am heartily sorry for my offense." Above all else Marietta did not wish to have the sister cease her tale and bid her depart. Sr. Maria Lucia face softened, and she continued her narrative. The girl before her was very young, and her words were mild compared to some, who demanded that the lovers of their own sex be burned at the stake.

He continued my training the next day, only this time it was to be more then just words.

"In a fight there is no such thing as honor, only victory, and winning the right to live another day."

He brought my hands and curled them around the knives, showing the vulnerable parts where a man could be rendered insensible. "Here and here," he said, the groin, the neck, and the spot where a blade would slip between the ribs and enter a man's heart, killing him instantly. He made me hit him again and again with both my hands and the two wooden practice blades he had made, metal being too likely to cause injury. I put no vigor into my strikes, for there was no way that I could be persuaded to injure my father. My weak efforts frustrated him, and he called for my mother, who never observed our lessons.

He took the toy daggers from my fingers and bid me watch. The air in the cellar was moldy, smelling of decay as the cheeses ripened and wine aged along the walls and I stood among the shadows and was soon forgotten. "Show this girl what it means to hunt." Father said, and he watched Mother closely as she took off the apron that protected her dress and stretched her fingers wide, loosening the stiffened joints. She must have been making bread, for she smelled of flour and yeast and the burnt deliciousness of the oven. A simple golden cross hung at her neck, and to my eyes she was the embodiment of love and goodness, more like the Madonna then the gilded effigies at church.

My father and mother began to circle on another in the packed dirt, their footsteps scarcely leaving a mark as they moved in counterpoint. My father's leg drug slightly, the permanent reminder of his time spent in the Castle St. Angelo being tortured for his knowledge of Duke Valentino. When he struck the movement was a blur, and he wrapped his arm around my mother's slender neck in a hold that she, so slight and small, could not possibly escape. I did not see how it happened but suddenly my father stumbled back, gasping, and my mother was in a crouch, a knife held in each hand and a triumphant smile on her face. She was a different person then, with the pins holding her dark hair gone and the dark locks twirling around her like a dancer.

This was no longer a lesson. It was a battle for supremacy. Their movements were impossibly fast as they struck at one another with knives that had been turned so the killing edge would not find a home in fragile flesh. He trapped her against a beam, using his superior strength to muscle her across the room and I thought the contest was finished but somehow she freed her arm and dealt him a vicious blow across the mouth. With the other hand she brought the keen edge of the knife against the thrumming pulse at his neck. The strike had caused a thin trickle of blood to cascade down his face. He turned slowly to face her, and wiped the crimson trickle with the back of his hand. Never raking his eyes from mother he licked it, savoring the taste in his mouth and his eyes were dark blue flames, lit from within. "Go tend to your brother for a bit, eh." My father murmured, never once looking in my direction. I ran, for the scent of desire was heavy in the air and I, promised to God, fled before it. The noises that emerged from the cellar for the next hour were muffled but I could well imagine the nature of the battle that they were now engaged in. The shrieks and moans that sounded like pain but were instead the sweetest form of pleasure.

My lessons changed after that, and my mother's hand was at work in the nature of my instruction. I was made to always wear the practice daggers at my waist and strapped to my leg. Throughout the day I was attacked in turn by my parents and my young cousins, who took to it with fervour. I was pinched or gently smacked with wooden spoons, or doused with water or spiders were put on my shoulders until I could draw the blades and hit the attacker, which stopped the assault. It did not take long before I had mastered the art of drawing my knives in an instant and then striking out, my muscles knowing instantly what they were needed to do. My father and mother were as silent as shades and the first occasion that I heard my father before he reached me I cried with delight, and his smile was full of pride. The wooden blades were eventually replaced by honed steel, much as the innocent girl I had been was tempered, and made into someone more befitting the legacy of my family. There was too much softness in me also to be the trained killer, but I became skilled in the art, and almost as fast as he who trained me. Before a year had passed my father and mother escorted me to the nunnery where I was to be trained on the service of God.

"My father died two years after the passing of Lucrezia Borgia. He went quietly, in his sleep, and he rests in a place that overlooks the sea. I do not think of him as he looked as we laid him there, so dignified in his best tunic, his white hair in perfect order. I remember him smiling when I bested him, and the rough voice that still sounds like a lullaby in my ears when sleep eludes me." Sister Maria Lucia said.

"Did he die in the fullness of grace?" Marietta asked timidly, not wanting to offend the sister who was brushing tears from her face. "Can we ever know how one stands before Judgement? In my eyes his sins were absolved by his love for me, a child not of his own blood, and I eagerly await our coming reunion." Sister Maria replaced the knives in the chest and pulled out a small wooden crucifix, which looked as though it had hung from a rosary.

"The walls of the convent loomed before me."


End file.
